No More War

THE WAR in Afghanistan is not over. US bombs are still raining down on innocent Afghans. The UN says that the civilian death toll is definitely in four figures. Independent investigations say as many as 8,000 may have been slaughtered.

Thousands more have been maimed for life. In remote villages there is nothing to eat but grass – hundreds are dying daily from starvation and cold and seven million are still at risk.

All this suffering and for what? The Taliban have been ousted to be replaced by feuding warlords with a brutal history of rape and violence. The central government has no control outside of Kabul and the country is descending into anarchy in chaos.

At the same time, the supposed target of the bombing – Osama bin Laden – and hundreds of al Qa’ida members have evaded capture. According to European intelligence sources, new recruits are joining the network, spurred on by the very war that was supposed to end terrorism!

Yet George Bush is threatening to extend the war to other “rogue states”, with Iraq at the top of the list. The US defence budget for 2002 is $329 billion. The planned increase of $48 billion would be enough to provide education, health care, food, safe water and sanitation for every person on the globe.

But Bush and Blair are representatives of the capitalist system. It’s a system based on exploitation of the working-class and poor internationally to create profits for a handful of multinational companies which dominate the global economy.

And capitalism’s political representatives are prepared to use military might to defend the interests of the profit system and their power and prestige internationally.

We won’t let them do so unchallenged. We need to build a strong anti-war movement that can show the extent of opposition to Bush and Blair’s warmongering ambitions. At the same time we need to strengthen the movement against capitalism.

But it’s not enough to be against war and capitalism. We also have to fight for an alternative system.

The Socialist Party is fighting for a socialist world – where the major companies and financial institutions would be brought into public ownership and control and the economy democratically planned in the interests of the majority, not just a privileged few.

If you want to see the world without war, poverty, inequality and oppression then join us in our struggle for socialism.